


This Vicious Flesh

by sarahworm



Category: Black Widow (Comics)
Genre: F/F, body horror but again it's pretty mild, comicsverse only and a specific comic at that (see AN for details), hallowlween, mild trigger warnings for trauma and brainwashing because this is a Black Widow story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27237475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: So, she came in from the cold, and started to change.
Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	This Vicious Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This story directly follows the end of the 2016 run (i.e. through issue #12) by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee and is pretty exclusively about events in that run...I've read other Black Widow comics since then but this is my favorite and I've always wondered about the end/wished it had gone on longer. 
> 
> (There's an additional, dumber inspiration for this fic but I've stuck it in the end notes).

So, she came in from the cold, and started to change.

First, her fingernails grew like crazy, unwieldy and thick. Then, thorns began to rise on the backs of her hands, stinging through her skin on their way, leaving her in tears the only time she tried to remove one.

Several weeks after Antarctica, she woke with blood filling her mouth, cheeks bleeding from teeth that were suddenly too sharp.

In from the cold, Maria had said, looking at Natasha with half a smile. And when she agreed, Maria had been unable to keep it from spreading across her face.

In from the cold, but it burned, and even before the thorns began spreading up her arms, being around the SHIELD HQ again made her skin feel raw and sensitized.

Nat was no stranger to being stared at, being distrusted among these people who were technically her colleagues. _Just slough it off_ , she told herself, as she had so many times before. _Snow on a pine branch, heavy. Slough it off._

But it didn’t go. The opposite, in fact, as the further time stretched from her return, the more uncomfortable she became. And then the thorns moved up her arms and across her collarbone, and she was a woman covered in brambles and sharp edges, aching.

And she hadn’t been the only out in the cold, after all. Natasha hadn’t allowed herself to even ask to speak to one of them, but she accessed the files compulsively, almost daily, checking on their progress with the fervency of a hard-luck farmer watching seedlings grow. Reading between the lines of the evaluations and reports and interviews as if a message would be waiting in code, letting her skip to the end and foretelling how it would all end up.

In the frigid basement gym of her run down apartment building, she exercised when she couldn’t sleep, or when she woke up tasting blood. Knuckles unbound and cracked on a punching bag, feet running and running on a treadmill. Thinking, _I am the job I do_ with each pounding step. Reminding herself where she’d come from and all she’d left behind.

“Come in,” Maria said, and Nat was on her doorstep and then inside, shivering.

They’d been on and off for so long, and usually the breaks were, if not amicable exactly, not really contentious either. But they hadn’t been off when Nat had stolen SHIELD files and jumped out of a helicarrier, and they’d never had it broken that abruptly before. Nat found that she didn’t know how to maneuver her way around the jagged edges. With other people, sure, but not with this person.

So she hadn’t been back, and Maria hadn’t called her, and now she found herself standing in Maria’s living room, unable to go forward.

“I can’t sleep.”

“I’m not surprised.” Maria folded her arms. “Took you long enough to come back.”

Nat snapped her eyes to the other woman’s face. “I can go, if you don’t want me here.”

Maria sighed, and then she stepped forward and eased Nat’s jacket off her shoulders. “You know that’s not what I meant. Sit down.”

Natasha sat, neck relaxing in spite of herself at the familiar proximity of Maria’s hands. “I want to go back in the field,” she said after a moment. “Clear me.”

“And why should I clear an agent who’s just gotten back from an unsanctioned and obviously traumatic mission, and who refuses a psych eval and advice despite admitted insomnia?”

“Because I’m not an agent, I’m a freelancer, and I know my own limits better than anybody else.”

“A freelancer at _my_ organization, one that _I’ve_ vouched for,” Maria said. She sat down across from Natasha. “I want to believe you, Nat,” she added after a moment. “But I also checked your access logs. Do you…do you want to go see the girls? They’re still in deprogramming, but I can arrange a visit if you want to see for yourself how they are.”

“No.” Revulsion coursed through her. Maria was still talking: “They speak of you often, I’m sure you’ve seen in the logs. They look up to you, they’re curious about you. Maybe it would do you all some good--”

_“No_.” Natasha managed to keep her control enough to not leap up from the chair, but she could feel Maria watching her breathing. “I don’t want them to see me,” she said. “I don’t want to be their end goal, their result.”

“Nat--” Maria started, but Natasha cut her off.

“I’m just – I’m this, ok?” She waved a hand in front of her face, opened her mouth and flashed her teeth. Maria didn’t blink, almost didn’t seem to notice. “I’m just an asset, an old woman, a monster who never fully came in from the cold. I do my job. That’s all I’ll ever be, so just put me back in the field so I can keep doing it.”

So here she was, sniper rifle warm and familiar in her hands, waiting for the buyer to exit the warehouse so she could make the shot.

What was he buying? Drugs, weapons, data – Natasha knew, the way she knew all the fine details of all her cases, but at the same time, for the first time in a long time, she didn’t care. She’d infiltrated the auction, followed the buyer for a few days, figured out the rendezvous. Once she took the shot, SHIELD agents would close in on the warehouse. Routine.

But today, routine itched at her, and too many times she found herself drifting back to assignments under different leadership.

The buyer emerged. Nat focused.

SHIELD wanted a non-fatality, suitable for eventual questioning. But just for a moment, she found her scope inching towards his head. It would be so easy. Just like she’d been trained.

She sucked in her breath, blinked, and pulled the trigger.

As the agents were swarming and medics were preparing the injured man to be secured and transported, Natasha vaulted down the fire escape. Maria found her a block away, pressed into a wall, shaking.

“I’m not deprogrammed,” she spit out, as soon as Maria’s arm was around her, Nat’s head falling to her shoulder as easy as breathing. “It’s been so long for me and I still have to work at it, and sometimes I’m afraid I slip, or something happens like the Lion and I see how simple it would be to go back to never questioning, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I don’t want that for them.”

Maria held her for a long minute. “How long have you felt this way?”

“The girls brought it to the surface,” Nat said, not answering, not sure if she knew the answer.

“You know,” Maria said, “I don’t think any of us would be in this kind of work if we weren’t constantly daring ourselves to keep going. Proving that we belong.”

Nat thought of Bucky in the snow, Fury on the moon. Maria at the funeral, performing a rite she didn’t originate. Following a pre-stamped pattern, just like her. “Maybe I would like--” she broke off, leaned her forehead against Maria’s, breathed in and out once. “Maybe I would like to see them. Not to talk, just to see.”

They watched the girls eat, a basic dinner together, and when Maria asked what Natasha was feeling, she didn’t tell her that she almost didn’t recognize such a setting without aggression, without competition. Some of them clearly still had guards that had worn down into fidgety glances over their shoulder, but they were comfortable around each other.

“I don’t want them to belong to it, belong to this life like the rest of us,” she said finally. She turned her head and looked Maria in the eyes. “And don’t promise me that they won’t, ever. That they won’t become like me after all.”

Maria traced one finger along the line of thorns following Natasha’s jaw. “You’re not a monster,” she said softly. “You’ve done monstrous things, but you’re not fixed in time as the person who did them. And neither will they be. Thanks to you.”

Nat reached up and caught her hand. “I don’t know how to believe you,” she said. “I think that’s why I stay in this job, because I don’t have anything else but this pattern to follow.”

Maria looked through the window at the girls, and then back at Natasha. “You don’t have to believe me,” she said. “Just trust me, and I’ll trust you, and we’ll keep moving.”

Natasha ran her fingers over her own palm, caressed the points of her teeth with her tongue. _How can I trust you, when I barely even trust my own skin?_ She almost asked.

But then she looked at Maria’s face, and felt the pressure of her hand.

Maybe she’d been carrying the cold inside her, too. Maybe she could learn to let it go, just a little.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I can do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> You know how in Age of Ultron Natasha has a line about being a monster and it's a potentially interesting character moment for about half a second but also sucks because it's primarily in the context of her not being able to have children? Yeah I'm still mad about it in 2020 because there's a lot that could be said there and a lot of places you could go but unfortunately Joss Whedon is a sexist asshole. Anyway my lingering feelings around that were a partial inspiration for this story and I felt I had to acknowledge it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.


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